Bereavement Training

Families in Grief offers training to schools, individuals and other organisations who come into contact with bereaved children. Our aim is to help people to understand the impact that bereavement can have on children and young people, and to become more confident in supporting them.

On receiving a request for support we will come in, listen to your needs and put together a suitable training package. This may be a one off twilight session (1.5 hours), a series of twilight sessions, a half day or full day of training.

Families in Grief works in conjunction with the Child Bereavement Trust.

No official statistics are collected on the number of children that are bereaved.

Samples suggest that:

around 1 in 25 children and young people currently aged 5-16 have experienced the death of a parent or sibling1

every 30 minutes in the UK a child is bereaved of a parent. This equates to 53 children a day, 20,000 children every year2

many more children are bereaved of a grandparent, school friend, other relative or another significant person such as a teacher.

a study showed that 70% primary schools had at least one pupil on roll who had experienced a significant bereavement in the last two years3.

bereaved children attend their GP more frequently8

children with a range of emotional and conduct disorders were found to be more likely to have experienced the death of a parent or sibling than those with no such disorder9.

Bereavement was listed as one of the five most common health issues encountered by a group of youth offending teams.10

1 Green, H et al (2005) Mental Health of Children and Young People in Great Britain, 2004 London:

2 Because no official statistics are collected on the numbers of children bereaved each year, Winston’s Wish, a CBN subscriber have calculated these figures using data from the Office of National Statistics and from Meltzer, M (1999) The Mental Health of Children and Adolescents HMSO